If they make it, they've cloned it!

Skin tags (known medically as acrochordons) are small and harmless tumors or growths that appear most commonly in area of the body where skin tends to crease or fold. They are often found around the armpits, neck, groin or eyelids, or anywhere the skin regularly creases and folds. They are incredible common and virtually everyone will deal with a skin tag at least once in their life. While they are found on nearly all people, they occur more often in those with obesity who have more folds of skin and therefore more opportunity for skin tags to develop. They are also more common in pregnant women because of increased hormones and also in those with diabetes. Although they are completely benign, many people find them embarrassing or unattractive and choose to remove them. You may also want to check out http://www.removeskintagsnow.com for more tips on removing skin tags at home.

There are three main methods of removal and many of them can be done at home:

Oils and Natural Acids:

Oregano Oil is antibacterial and contain anti-inflammatory properties that can lessen the appearance of skin tags with repeated use. It should be diluted with coconut oil and applied three times daily in order to dry out the growth, eventually leading to it falling off.

Tea Tree Oil works in the same way. Repeated and daily applications will also allow the growth to dry and fall off.

Lemon juice has been known to create a similar effect as the oils listed above. Dilute the lemon juice with an equal amount of water and apply with a cotton ball.

Apple Cider Vinegar works the same as lemon juice as they are both acidic. The vinegar does not need to be diluted but if any irritation occurs, dilution should reduce any discomfort.

Alcohol can also be used to dry skin tags and can be applied in the same manner as the vinegar, diluted if irritation occurs.

Tying or Cutting

Skin tags can be removed at home by simply tying a thread or dental floss around the growth and pulling in order to cut off the growth at its base. This method can be painful for some but generally, because there is little sensation in the skin tag, it is a painless process.

Skin tags can also be cut off. This can be done at home with scissors or nail clippers or can be done safely by a doctor who will use a sanitary scalpel. Continue reading »

They might be setting up gala product introductions or orchestrating theme-oriented extravaganzas in wildlife parks. Whatever their surroundings, professional event planners are busy helping a wide array of clients cut through the clutter of traditional advertising.

“It’s another opportunity for my clients to sell in a nonthreatening way,” says Layne Kaplan, a San Francisco-based event planner for high-tech companies. “You can target a group of people, bring them together, and give them the full message. Instead of selling, it’s more like bringing them into your fold.”

Planning and pulling off an event, however, can be an overwhelming ordeal for the inexperienced. That fact, combined with the increasing recognition of the effectiveness of events-oriented marketing, means a potentially lucrative opportunity for creative entrepreneurs with a good mind for detail. Successful, full-time planners make more than $100,000 a year.

The field of event-oriented marketing has grown tremendously in the last decade, according to Lisa Vested, publisher of Special Events magazine. Though the recent downturn in the economy has hurt some smaller event planners, the magazine estimates that roughly $35 billion is spent on corporate marketing events in the United States each year.

The event planner’s job is to create something that will capture the imagination, then coordinate the endless array of details involved in making it happen. For pulling off an event, planners earn anywhere from $1,800 to $30,000 in fees, according to Kaplan. The client pays expenses on top of that. For simple Continue reading »

Until recently, there were very few options for borrowing small amounts of money (under $10,000) to start or expand a home business. Banks usually don’t make loans to home businesses. And venture capitalists won’t even talk about such small amounts. The best hope has been to take out a home-equity loan, run credit-card balances to the max, or borrow from a friend. But there is good news. More and more private, nonprofit, community-based institutions are being formed, and they are giving more and more microloans–from $250 to $25,000. Over 200 microloan organizations use private or public sources from a revolving loan fund to make short-term loans to low-and moderate-income individuals who want to start or expand a business. A high percentage of the loans are made to people who run home-based businesses. The purpose of the loans is clear: to promote self-employment and business development for people and areas that were hard hit by the recent recession.

THE ORIGINS OF MICROLOANS

Interestingly, for some time the U.S. government has been giving $75 million a year to fund such microloan programs in other parts of the world through its AID program. Over the past five years, however, microloan programs have popped up in the United States and many more are on the drawing board. A 1991 study by Continue reading »

Snoring is a nightmare. It is not just an unwanted nuisance, it can be a sign of a much more dangerous condition called sleep apnea. Sleep apnea occurs when the snorer’s airway is completely closed during sleep, causing a lack of oxygen. As a result, the person will wake up to correct it. This creates a disturbing sleep/awake trend that can make ordinary life impossible, if not dangerous to yourself and those around you. People with sleep apnea have an increased incidence of accidents, some of can occur while on the job.

What most people are also not aware of are the alarming health conditions that are directly related to snoring. People who snore are at a higher risk of developing strokes, heart disease, heart attack, heart arrhythmias and high blood pressure.

There are many products on the market today that can help lower or eliminate snoring altogether. Considering how important your health is, and those around you, don’t you think it is time to take action? Personally, I would prefer to find something to help me that doesn’t resemble a mask worn by aliens. Not to mention how incredibly sexy my spouse might find it to be.

The Good Morning Snore Solution is a revolutionary device in the category of TRD anti-snoring solutions. TRD stands for Tongue Retaining Device. And it does just that, it holds your tongue in place while you sleep. During sleep, gravity works by pulling the tongue backwards into the throat, and as air passes by it causes it to vibrate resulting in the snoring sound. The really great advantages to this device are, unlike the MAD devices (Mandibular Advancement Device), which works to hold your jaw in place, in some cases causing jaw pain and long term bite misalignment, the Good Morning Snore Solution simply has a gentle suction that holds your tongue in place.

PRO: Modular design, good file service speed, second least expensive system in roundup

CON: No RAID subsystem, limited features at this price

In our previous server roundup, the ProLiant 1600 rang up the top overall performance score and the lowest configured price of all the units we tested. Not so this time: Pitted against beefier Xeon systems, the plain-vanilla PIII-500 ProLiant finished last in the SQL and network tests (not counting our single-CPU reference unit). The Compaq’s file score was good enough for second place, but the server excludes a RAID subsystem, which provides highly desirable redundancy protection at the expense of performance. Compaq configured the ProLiant with a software RAID, which often is faster than hardware RAIDs, especially those configured for maximum reliability (RAID level 5).

One gripe with previous versions of the ProLiant was their lack of redundancy features. Although the newest ProLiant still lacks redundant cooling fans, Compaq now offers a hot-swappable power supply option. Our test unit had the maximum three power supplies installed.

The floppy drive, CD-ROM drive, and two empty 5.25-inch bays are readily accessible with the front door closed. The front panel is easy to remove, revealing the six hot-swap drive bays. Even with a 100Base-T network card occupying a PCI slot, the system left five slots free, because the SCSI controller is integrated. But the Compaq can handle only up to 1GB of RAM–a smallish maximum for a server these days.

The ProLiant 1600 is diminutive for a server, with a minimum of wasted space inside, but its highly modular design makes servicing and upgrading quick and easy. Disassembly requires just twisting a thumbscrew and then pressing a tab or swinging out a lever. The server breaks down quickly into function-specific subassemblies, such as the processor cage and the expansion card cage. Expansion cards are held in place by tool-free tabs and can be accessed by removing the unit’s top cover or by sliding the entire card cage out the rear of the system.

Compaq includes a setup utility, as well as server- or client-accessible monitoring tools designed to alert you to potential problems. But Remote Insight, which enables you to access the server via modem and supplies 30 minutes of battery backup, costs an additional $886. There is also additional server support by Hard Drive Recovery Group in Irvine, CA. Their guide to recovering data from the ProLiant 1600 and others is here.

Buyers value the security features, non-dedicated server capabilities, low maintenance and low cost of peer-to-peer networks. Some buyers, however, find that the performance and reliability of these networks are not adequate for more demanding applications or for larger LAN configurations.